6 Ethics for Embryologists 153somebody’s baby on the floor... All of a sudden one day I burst out
crying when I was doing this and after that I was fine, I didn’t shake,
and I haven’t shaken since’. In both types of work ‘practice, practice,
practice’ was the mantra for learning. If the unfortunate happened and
a rare mistake was indeed made, it was taken as the most brutal and
effective way of learning. When one worker reflected on the profoundly
upsetting experience of failing to inseminate just one of the multiple
wells containing ova before placing them in the incubator, the only
ethical response was to correct that error in technique and remember
forever. The scientist framed it as ‘I’ve never done that again—I always
double check!’ Bosk ( 2003 ), in his study of the surgical culture in 1970s
US medicine around errors, describes a similar response as ‘forgive and
remember’ with respect to errors of judgement and technique. This
attention to consequences permeated all aspects of the laboratory work.
That is,
...because we are all paranoid about the ‘unspeakables’ like dropping a
dish [containing embryos] I always think when I’m in theatre: “Don’t trip
over! Don’t trip over!” And you hold the test tube really tightly and when
we carry the dishes we always have one hand out underneath so if it slips
out of that hand the other hand will catch it. If you’re walking behind
someone you say, “I’m behind you and I’ve got embryos” so that they
don’t move their chair back and knock it out of your hands. In every-
thing we do, there is this potential for disaster, and so you’re always sort
of aware...Personhood of Gametes and Embryos
Another ‘classical’ element of embryology practice that is often singled
out as a contentious issue is the personhood (or otherwise) of repro-
ductive material. In this sense, the preceding quote demonstrates well
how something as taken for granted and quotidian as a small slip of the
hand could become a very significant ‘adverse clinical outcome’. This
ethical dilemma surrounding the personhood of reproductive material
was most starkly evidenced in relation to the judgement of embryos